Looking for a school fundraising idea that engages students, doesn’t involve order forms, and has a great profit margin? Perhaps it is time for your school to organize a student hosted dinner party fundraiser! This is a fun way to get the students to take ownership of the fundraising for the school.

Choose the School Fundraising Dinner Venue and Date

First, you need to plan a night. If it is held at your school make sure it does not coincide with other school sponsored activities. Another option would be to hold it at a local hotel, event center, or church. This can cut into overhead cost, unless the sight will donate the use of space for the cause. It never hurts to call around and ask! The date could coincide with a holiday season, but may be more successful if it is a less busy time of year (like January or February) so that more people are available to come.

Consider offering child care

Selling tickets may be a lot easier if free child care is offered on-sight. There are some logistical challenges to keep in mind (such as space, safety and equipment). If the challenges are too difficult, offer child care for a specific age (5-12) and simply show a family movie during the dinner in a separate room.

Sell tickets

Ticket prices should depend on the average income in your area. For affluent areas you may even consider throwing a black tie dinner and selling tickets for as much as $100 or more a plate. If you have younger families, simply throwing a spaghetti dinner for $5-10 a person is an idea. Decide if it will be a buffet or a plated meal, and how many courses there will be. This information can be printed on the tickets. Encourage students to sell tickets to parents, grandparents, neighbors etc.

Have the Students Prepare the Food

Decided who will prepare the food, and how it will be done is the most complicated part of the process. You may want to have students take complete ownership and have groups of students prepare a portion of the meal, and groups of students serve the meal. There are many ways to get the students involved in the different parts of planning, running and organization.

There are many other school fundraising ideas out there, such as coffee, which could be incorporated into your dinner fundraiser. Cookie dough, doughnuts, and candy bars are other food options, but they don’t fit a school sponsored dinner atmosphere as well as good coffee does.

Provide Entertainment

Student entertainment is a great way to make the night memorable and enjoyable. Have a variety show. Have musicians, comedians, skits, soloists etc. perform for the audience. Displaying student art for the parents and guests to look at is a nice bonus as well.

Coffee fundraising is becoming a very popular way to raise money for schools. Coffee not only is a product used by everyone, but is also certainly more useful than candy or cookie dough. Almost every household in America drinks a cup of coffee daily, and certainly every business in the country has a break room with coffee on hand. A coffee fundraiser is by-far one of the easiest and best school fundraisers out there, as people are more likely to buy good coffee from your students over any other product.

With local roasters doing private label bags, your school can easily have a beautifully packaged product that is specifically branded to your cause. By printing your school’s name and mascot on the bag, it makes the sale even easier (and offers very convenient advertising for your school).

How does a coffee fundraiser work?

When you run the fundraiser, send your participants out into the community to collect coffee orders. Customers can place orders and make payments directly with the students. The coffee company will then send you the coffee and your students can deliver to your happy customers. It’s as simple as that. Driven Coffee is a great example of a coffee fundraiser program catered towards schools.

How to make your coffee fundraiser more interesting

That being said, there are ways to make a coffee fundraiser more attractive for the community. You can do this by hosting an initial kickoff event. The following are just a few ideas that can complement coffee fundraiser and bring in more money for your school.

1. The Saturday Breakfast: Have a Saturday community breakfast. So breakfast plates, explain your fundraising event, the amount of money you need to raise, and where the money will go. While everyone is conversing and having a good time, you can take orders for your coffee sales.

2. A bake sale: a bake sale is always a lot of fun. Ask your volunteers to bake cookies, cakes and other baked goodies for sale. Be sure to set up a stand for your coffee fundraising efforts as well. If you decide to make this event at the beginning, you can take orders for coffee. If you decide to do it at the end of your fundraising event, you can offer samples of the coffee or sell coffee packages there.

3. A Morning Garage Sale: garage sales are always lucrative for nonprofit events. Community businesses to donate items, and be sure to let volunteers know they can drop off their used, but in good shape items off a few days before. This will give you time to price everything and get it ready. Then on the day of your garage sale, set up the booth to take coffee orders.

Bottom Line
Like these, there are many other great fundraising ideas that can make your coffee sales even more lucrative. At any rate, an event at the beginning or end of your coffee fundraiser will allow community members to understand what you are trying to do.

School safety has become an increasingly huge focus in this country. As such, it has become common place to require students to have identification around their necks at all time. This is to ensure safety for students, staff, bus drivers etc. Knowing who should and shouldn’t be walking around the school, or riding buses is the first step to keeping everyone safe. The great thing about this new ID policy is that it provides another opportunity to raise funds for your school. Selling lanyards and lanyard charms can be an easy and quick fundraiser that take place within your school (which is much less hassle than sending students out with order forms).

Here are some tips for your school lanyard fundraising sale:

1. Order school spirit lanyards! What a great way to promote school spirit than by having lanyards that display your school logo, name, and/or mascot on them. Custom ordered lanyards are cheap and the profit margin is there for making your school money. It is easy to research a find a place that will make these for you online, but you also may want to check local businesses that may do the same type of work.

2. Incentive Tags: some lanyard companies sell tiny tags that have awards, sports names etc. on them. Students can collect of buy these little tags to display on their lanyard for each group, activity, sport, and/or award they have received. This is another way to continue raising money, and also promotes community and recognition for students.

3. Order specific sport lanyards: The football team can have football lanyards with your school’s name and logo, or the cheerleaders can have their own as well. Get students involved in designing these and you will have more student invested interest. Sell them at sporting events to parents and fans in the community to raise even more funds for your school.

4. Lanyard Charms: some companies also sell small lanyard charms. If students enjoy collecting these for extracurricular activities they are involved in, half the work is done! Fundraising with a product that is coveted has the greatest level of success!

5. Lanyard Pins: another great add-on for fundraising is selling the pins to go around the lanyard strap. Similar to tags or charms, these pins can represent sports, groups, activities and/or awards and recognitions. Some of the profits earned can go back into purchasing reward pins for honor roll students to encourage and recognize student achievement.

Why not put some spice into your schools fundraising efforts and do something totally new and different? Here are some fun and silly ideas for your school the next time fundraising comes around.

1. Teacher Torture Fundraiser: decide on your brand of torture (hair being dyed, kissing a pig, dancing in front of the school wearing a chicken suit etc.). Have jars in the school office with the names of teachers, principal, willing participants. Parents, staff member and students can vote on teachers by placing money in the jar of the corresponding teacher. The top 3 or so money earners have to participate in the torture plans.

2. Kidnap the teacher: have classes raise money for a period of time. The winning class will receive a party (their teacher will be kidnapped and party brought in by administration).

3. Movie Night: organizer a family movie night at your school. Sell concessions and have a great even that brings families together.

4. Gift wrapping night: around Christmas time is a great time to hold all sorts of fundraisers. Why not hold a fundraiser that helps people out with a task that can be sometimes daunting. Have parents/students donate wrapping supplies and engage students and staff in the wrapping. Ask for donations or charge a certain amount per package.

5. Bake-less Bake Sale: Send a note home to parents saying that they are invited to NOT bake something for a bake-sale. They do NOT need to buys ingredients, search for that recipe, bring them into school, retrieve a plate and wash it. They are instead invited to send a $10 check into school and then stay home and enjoy NOT baking.

6. Food Fight! What kid hasn’t dreamed of having a down and out ultimate food fight in the cafeteria (with teachers involved!)? Why not make everyone’s dreams come true (well except the people who have to clean up after)? Charge for the chance to throw food at your peers and teachers in the ultimate food war. Have local businesses donate items and cash as well.